200600402 - Crystal River (We visit the Crystal River Archaeological State Park)

This week we took a walk around the Crystal River Archaeological State Park. It is a very beautiful spot on the river with lots of trees. It has been designated as one of the locations for the Great Florida Birding Trail, although Sue and Rich did not see birds. It is obvious why this was a spot for building even long ago (see the photo collage).
As we were leaving the area I noticed several residential canals in the area so the next day I drove back to take photos of this area for this blog. It was quite nice, one block a street, the next the end of a finger canal, then a street, then a canal, and so on. As I was stopping to take photos on one street the owner of the house on the corner came out and turned on his water sprinklers. I did not get wet but still decided he was inviting me to move along. Some time later as I was taking photos of another canal, the owner of the corner house came out, invited me on to his deck, and told me about his area. He said that they had had a mother and baby manatee in their canal the previous week, that they had had dolphins in the canal, that it was a very nice friendly neighborhood. Completely different attitude. We have been here for four months and I had no idea that there were residential canals in the city.
At some point while we were here at Rock Crusher Park someone mentioned to me how nice it was not to have bugs, especially no-see-ums. I did not understand what he was saying. While we were at the state park, Rich got bit hundreds of times on his legs (he was wearing shorts) and arms. Now he has hundreds of little sores from scratching the bites. I was lucky at the Park, however, while I taking photos of the canals, I was not so lucky. We have been very lucky here in Rock Crusher, there are lots of biting bugs in the area.
This week we decided on a plan for the near future. We were going to Disney world for 10 days (April 3 to April 13), then we were going to the Florida Keys for about a week, then we were starting up the east coast towards the Maritime region of Canada. We have reservations on a flight to Seattle from Newark on May 27, and return reservations from Seattle to Newark on June 5 (for my next set of medical appointments and for Eric‘s wedding). We were going to visit with my brother Steve and his family in New Jersey before or after the Seattle trip (at their convenience). As soon as I wrote people about our plans, they changed. Most everything is still the same, however, instead of going to the keys, we are taking a 12 day transatlantic cruise from Fort Lauderdale to Punta Delgada, Azores; to Lisbon, Portugal; to Seville, Spain; to Barcelona, Spain; followed by seven days in Spain and Italy, ending in Milan, Italy for the flight back to Fort Lauderdale. We do not yet have detailed plans for the Spain-Italy portion of the trip other than the flight out of Milan and the desire to see Florence and the Cinque Terre. Our retirement plans have always included the ability to take short-notice low-priced cruises and this was one such opportunity.
I collect pins as low cost mementos of our trips. I have hundreds saved at home, but I have continued to purchase them since we have been living and traveling in the Fifth Wheel. I decided this week to take some photos of some of my newer pins to share.
Since tomorrow we leave Rock Crusher, today we took some pictures of Max and one of his local friends, Muffin. They are so cute together.